One contribution to maladaptive or aberrant psychological and social functioning of children is distortions in their perceptions of their social, personal, and physical environments and distortions in their causal attributions regarding their responsibility for these events. The aims of this project are threefold: (a) To develop measures of social perspective taking, and of causal attribution of physical, social, and affective events; (b) To examine longitudinally the evolution of different patterns of social understanding in young children; (c) To examine relationships between social cognition and causal attribution and interpersonal behavior and how these relationships are influenced by developmental processes. Forty-eight children children participated when they were approximately two and five years of age. Children's interactions with peers and mother were evaluated for frequency of interaction, complexity of each type of interaction, and initiation. Mothers of all the "target" children have diagnoses of normal or depressed. A second group of children (N = 40; 4 to 11 years) also participated in a social communication problem-solving task. These studies should enhance our understanding of cognitive processes involved in adaptive and maladaptive social behaviors.